Wordle Game Rules: List of Every Rule in Wordle [Explained]

Wordle has been nothing short of a wonderful little gift from the heavens. A tiny word-guessing game that has taken over the internet in the blink of an eye. Which, honestly if you think about it is a delightful turn of events from the dreary seriousness we walked into 2022 with. There are no ads, it’s free to play and you get only one word per day. There’s a novelty in solving the daily Wordle that’s slowly becoming an essential part of everyone’s life.

It’s easy to get hooked on Wordle and hard to leave its miniature joys. You see the randomly aligned colored boxes staring at you from your phone, begging you to come and join the fun and you can’t help but submit to it. We understand you.

To play Wordle efficiently you need to know the ins and outs of it. Don’t worry, we’re here to guide you through Wordle’s rules so you can focus on guessing the daily word rather than letting simple rules bother your experience.

Wordle rules: All you need to know

Newcomer to the Wordle phenomena? Wordle will always stick a pop-up containing instructions every time a newcomer stumbles on their website: https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/. You can read these instructions again by visiting Wordle’s official website in private/incognito mode if you wish.

In the meantime, let’s get you up and running with Wordle’s Rules.

Wordle is not a time-sensitive game. While you get 24 hours to guess that day’s word, there is no other active countdown as you try to brainstorm your way into the most efficient guessing path. You can take your time. The goal is to spend anxiety-free 10-15 minutes every day and have fun along the way.

After each successful guess, Wordle will present you with your stats and a countdown for the next day’s word.

Everyone around the world gets the same word. This makes sharing your results on social media all the more fun as you can compare the unique guessing paths you and your friends took to arrive at the same destination.

You get 6 tries to guess the word of the day. In case you’re wondering if 6 tries are enough we’re here to assure you that, for a 5 letter word they’re more than enough.

All 6 guesses must be valid words according to Wordle’s dictionary, which is basically the set of all 5 letter words plucked from the English dictionary. If you enter an invalid word, Wordle won’t accept your input and you’ll have to enter again. If you have any doubts you can simply enter the word and Wordle will inform you whether your input was a valid one or not.

Every guess returns valuable information. Look at the picture below. A green square on S in our first guess implies that not only does S belongs in the answer but that it also occurs at the same place (1st place in our case). Same for G.

Yellow squares on R in our 1st guess and on A and U in our 2nd guess imply that those respective letters belong in the answer but not at those specific locations. For example, R belongs in the word but not at the 4th place, A and U also belong in the word but not at the 1st and last position respectively.

The ideal approach to solving Wordle is to use every bit of information you have before making your next guess. For example, in the above picture, we’ve already deduced 5 distinct letters that belong in the word (S, U, R, G, and A). Therefore your next intelligent guess should be the word itself.

Wordle hard mode rules

In a surprising turn of events, Wordle has evolved into one of those online things that have the capability of bringing people together. People, you and us included, are inherently competitive and we can’t get enough of sharing and comparing our results on social media. But are you aware that Wordle offers an even harder playing mode for competitive players?

It’s entirely possible that you might already be using the Hard Mode rules subconsciously. For those who’re not aware of it, jump right in.

Hard Mode imposes further restrictions on the guesses you’re allowed to make. Gone are the days when you could ignore the alignment of green and yellow tiles from your previous guesses. In Hard Mode, you can no longer make random guesses and hope to arrive at the word by hit and trial. You have to use the hints received in your previous guesses while making future guesses.

For example, let’s say our first guess was STORY. It turns out S is the first letter of the answer and it also contains R. We can also deduce that R is not the 1st or the 4th letter. Therefore, if Hard Mode is toggled on, your next guess has to start with S and R needs to occur somewhere in it.

Let’s say our next guess is SABER. Wow! That revealed quite a lot of information. Our next guess needs to start with S and end with R. Not only that but A needs to be a part of it. It’s perfectly fine if your next guess has A as the 2nd letter again, even in Hard Mode.

Let’s say our next guess is SAGER.

You can now easily deduce that the only place left for A is 4th place. If you look close enough you’ll also find that Hard Mode has in fact helped you a ton in guessing the word.

Hard Mode is nothing special. In fact, its primary purpose is to streamline your guessing choices and help you get the best result you can. With time and experience, you will naturally adopt the Hard Mode rules as your normal Wordle routine.

FAQs

Can I use the same guess twice in Wordle?

Yes, you can. Even the Hard Mode allows you to use the same guess twice. However, this serves no purpose and you will likely lose a try for nothing.

Can I toggle on the Hard Mode if I’ve already made a guess?

No, Wordle does not allow you to turn on the Hard Mode in the middle of a guessing session. Hard Mode’s purpose is to force players to use all the information acquired from their previous tries to improve their future guesses. The ability to toggle Hard Mode on or off in the middle of a session would defeat its purpose.

Is there a way I can track how well I did on Wordle?

Yes. Wordle has a lovely community of players and developers working together to improve the daily word-guessing experience. There’s a wonderful website called Scoredle which can track your Wordle performance. Simply enter your guesses on Scoredle’s website in the same order you did while solving the puzzle initially. This should give you a detailed analysis of your performance. You can see the possible guesses at every step and a detailed list of possible words before your last and correct guess. Look at the picture below, it seems we did pretty well.

Can I play older Wordle puzzles?

Yes, you can. Although not official, there’s a website made by Wordle fans that allows you to pick a date and play that specific date’s Worlde. Amazing right? This should help new players get a hang of the word-guessing phenomena. Refer to our detailed guide to know more about playing past Wordle games.

Related: How to Play Old Wordles

If you face any issues or have any more questions, feel free to drop them in the comments section below.

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